Posts Tagged ‘linkedin’

The Aspirational (and imaginary) 50% Goal in Kabul

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Kabul is in lock-down right now, with 40 foreign ministers and other assorted big wigs in town for a chinwag.  And judging from the draft communiqué, they’ve been doing a lot of talking.   It weighs in at 5900 words, which is impressive even by the long-winded standards of the pin-striped diplomatic set.

I can’t recommend reading the whole thing; it’s very dry reading even for the most wonkish among us (although the section condemning the 90s sitcom Saved By the Bell is unexpected and persuasive).

What did jump out at me (and at the NYT staff apparently) was the pledge:

“In line with the London Conference Communiqué participants restated their strong support for channeling at least 50% of development aid through the Afghan Government’s core budget within two years…”

This is an admirable goal for several reasons, but it seems highly unlikely it will ever be achieved.

It’s admirable, first, because money spent through the local government strengthens that government and its ability to provide services to the population.  When donors are channeling all their funds through NGOs, to deliver healthcare for example, then the actual healthcare system is biased and suffers.   Former Afghan Finance Minister, UN Secretary General candidate, and international trouble-making gadfly Ashraf Ghani and his partner-in-crime Clare Lockhart have covered this ground thoroughly.

It’s also admirable because aid money channeled through the local government has a much larger local economic impact.  Instead of being spent on international consultants and bottled water bought in Dubai, it tends to get spent on Afghan civil servants and local contractors.  In recent years, PDT researchers were able to prove this quantitatively here, here, and here.  Roughly 80¢ on every dollar spent through the local government enters the Afghan economy.  Whereas an aid dollar spent on an international contractor leaves only 10-15¢ in the local economy.

Finally, it’s admirable because it allows the Afghan people to see the Afghan government helping them, as opposed to internationals driving around in white armored SUVs.  This builds support for the concept of an elected government, makes them more likely to pay taxes, and undermines public support for the Taliban.

But, here’s the rub.  The international agencies are currently a long ways from reaching the 50% target.  In 2009, PDT was asked to undertake a survey of all the donors.  They were well short.  How short? Hard to judge, given that they were reporting budgetary support in the same category as trust fund spending.  Combined, those two channels only added up to 40%.

Donors are a long way from 50%

And this leads us to the second problem.  Donors aren’t really tracking this.   They don’t know how well they are doing.  If they do, they aren’t telling anyone.  For example, has anyone seen any numbers showing current budgetary support grants by donor?  If you have, please share them.

And finally, the third problem is stories like the recent Wall Street Journal article that grossly exaggerated the level of corruption.  It (understandably) spooks the donors.  The donors sometimes take smart decisions like setting up a task force to help prevent corruption.  But more often they take rash decisions to simply cut funding.  So until the donors can see some progress on the perceived levels of corruption, there is no way they are going to even want to achieve the 50% goal they’ve set for themselves.

But here’s a secret from a former diplomat. It’s all ok.  The donors aren’t really that concerned about the 50% target.  First, it’s non-binding or “aspirational”, which in diplo-speak means “Wouldn’t it be great if….”.  And second, they know that no one will really be keeping score when they all get together next summer in Tokyo.  In fact, they might even dust off this pledge off and stick it in their communique.

Sigh.

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Posted in Aid Effectiveness, Aid industry | 2 Comments »

Great things in the pipeline

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

One of the perks at PDT - Bryant Park

There’s a bounce in my step these days, and the entire office is noticeably more chipper than usual.  Even the over-worked under-loved interns are twittering (metaphorically, not digitally).  Spring is not the cause, though sunny lunches in Bryant Park tend to put a smile on one’s face.  No, the buzz around here is because PDT has some great things in the pipeline.

PDT has grown between 50-100% every year since we formed in 2004.  The pace of expansion has been exhausting, and necessity has often forced us to delay launching various new initiatives or innovations.  But after winning the Skoll Prize, adding new staff, and securing some more long-term donor funding, we are waiting no longer.

So watch this space.  Over the next few months we will be:

-Opening a new country office

-Expanding our Afghan presence

-Throwing out our current websites and launch something entirely different

-Totally revamping the Building Market’s online platforms

-Hiring a team of Guerilla Blogger Ninjas (to borrow a phrase from Ben Popken)

-Hosting a fundraising event in NYC

-And something super cool, super secret, which could be huge, and which I can’t even talk about.  Let’s call it “Project Farol”

Nothing makes us happier around here than new ideas.  No wonder we’re giddy.

Which reminds me, we need more people on the team to help us to do all this.  We’re hiring.  So if you’re interested, take a look here.  Have fun. Change the world (and eat lunch in Bryant Park).

Change is afoot. We can feel it...

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Posted in Changing the world | 4 Comments »

Chairman Mao knew how to improve aid

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

I am not sure how I started thinking about this.  Maybe it was because I spent this week in San Francisco, one of the biggest hubs in America for social entrepreneurs.  Or it could have been this article about some enterprising undergrads who turned a class project into a real NGO.

Regardless of the reason, I’ve been recalling the period before I quit my job as a diplomat to launch Peace Dividend Trust.  I was a rash thing to do.  So, before I leapt, I cautiously tested the waters of the non-profit world and spoke to every charity I could find.  I’d sit down with the Executive Director and tell them my idea, and ask them for advice.  Without exception, the reception I received was negative.

“It’s not needed.”

“It won’t work.”

“You’ll never find funding.”

“We’re already doing that.”

In one memorable case, the ED used all four of those lines in the same conversation.

Since then, I have wondered why all those other NGOs were so discouraging.  It was partly because, in Canada, the aid community relies almost entirely on domestic funding and CIDA.  Therefore any new entry is seen as simply more competition for pieces of a small pie.  It was also partly because PDT’s objective to rethink and change the way aid and peacekeeping is delivered basically implied that their organizations were doing a fairly lousy job.  (For the record, they were and most still are.)

Anyway, being as bloody-minded as I am, this chorus of opposition pretty much guaranteed that I would give it a shot.  And I did, quitting my job on the day my first daughter was born to set up an organization that at the time was nothing more than an idea on a laptop.

In the intervening six years, PDT  survived and prospered and more importantly, our ideas made a difference.  For example, we convinced the UN that they needed a manual to manage how peacekeeping missions were launched, and then we wrote it for them.  And we changed the way that aid procurement is viewed and in the process launched a pilot that redirected almost half a billion dollars into the Afghan economy.

If our ideas weren’t needed, or didn’t work, then PDT would have failed and I would be slinging burgers now (demand for ex-diplomats is surprisingly low).  But they were needed, and they did work, and we are making a difference.  Which is why I always support anyone who wants to start a new charity or a new NGO.  Their idea may sound stupid, but on the other hand it may work.  And our track record as an industry suggests we could use as many new ideas as possible.  More aid organizations force greater competition for donor dollars, which means we need to work harder to prove our plans make sense; we have to work harder to prove we can implement them, and we have to work harder to prove we can change the world.

Chairman Mao was right. We should “let a thousand flowers bloom”.  Of course, in that case he then executed all those new blooms, but let’s not let a mere historical fact ruin a great metaphor.

Chairman Mao: Aid visionary, florist

POSTSCRIPT: About two years ago it was pointed out to me that PDT is now twice as large as the NGO run by the Executive Director who said “It’s not needed.  It won’t work.  Besides, we’re doing it already”. It’s petty of me to point this out, but if you can’t be petty in your own blog, where can you?

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Posted in Aid industry | No Comments »

What Aid can learn from Hollywood

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

Irrefutable Point #1

Earlier this week my wife and I were arguing about which movie we should see.  I was pushing for Iron Man 2.  My position was simple:

1) Robert Downey Jr. rocks, and

2) It had a huge budget.

The first point is utterly irrefutable, but even before the last point was out of my mouth, I knew had lost the argument.  But oddly enough, in Hollywood,  the second point always wins.  The entire movie industry revolves around point #2.  It is the fundamental basis of the economic theory that defines Hollywood:

-To make money, make a good movie.
-To make a good movie, spend lots on the budget.
-Therefore, if you want to make more money, spend more on the budget.

So, if you are a movie studio and you want to make a big pile of profit, the path is clear.  You secure a big budget, which allows you to hire the best actor (like Mr. Downey Jr.), a brilliant director (like Jon Favreau), a sexy co-star (hello Ms. Johansson) terrific costumes, and then lay on some stunning special effects.  Throw some gratuitous skin into the mix and you have a critically acclaimed blockbuster.  Simple.

If you graphed “The Theory of Hollywood”, with budget plotted on the x axis, box office on the y axis, and the color of the points representing critical acclaim (let’s say the Rotten Tomatoes score), you would get this:

Click on chart for animation

This shows clearly how a bigger budget gets a you a better movie, which brings in a bigger box office.   But let’s look at the reality.  I had Kavya-the-intern (she has “mad excel skillz” as the kids say) take a random sample of 50 of the 1000 most expensive movies ever made.  She then plotted their budget (inflation adjusted), against their box office return and their Rotten Tomatoes score.  This is what she got:

Click on chart for animation

The “Hollywood: The Reality” bears no resemblance to “Hollywood: The Theory”.  A bigger budget doesn’t inevitably mean a better or more popular movie because of bad scripts, sunny opening weekends, disastrous location shoots, meddlesome studio heads, temperamental directors, Adam Sandler, and bad luck.

So, since this is supposed to be a blog about development and peacekeeping what happens when we apply the same analysis to aid spending?  The simplified theory behind aid, is:

-To improve lives, reduce poverty.
-To reduce poverty, send aid.
-Therefore, if you want to improve lives even more, send more aid.

If you were to get Kavya-the-intern to graph “The Theory of Aid”, with Cumulative ODA per capita plotted on the y axis, Cumulative Increase in GDP per capita on the x axis, and Cumulative Increase in Life Expectancy as the point color, you would get this:

Click on chart to see animation

Over time, more aid leads to higher GDP and longer lives.  This is the argument used by those who shout out most vociferously for donor governments to spend 0.7% of GDP on development assistance.  Don’t believe me? Listen to Jeff Sachs.

But if you were to make the interns work late and ask them to pull ten years of data out of the World Bank website, then reproduce that graph using real data on 20 nations randomly chosen from among the 50 largest aid recipients, you would get this:

Click on chart for animation

The “Aid: The Reality” bears no resemblance to “Aid: The Theory”.  More aid doesn’t inevitably mean less poverty or longer lives because of wars, demographic changes, shifting donor priorities, ineffective projects, corruption, natural disaster, poor planning, and bad luck.

The movie going public understands this.  This weekend at Cannes, you won’t hear people demanding that Hollywood spend more money on bigger movie budgets.  You’ll hear them calling for better movies.  Smarter plots.  More compelling performances.  Improved directing.

Those who care about aid and aid effectiveness could take a cue from their brethren on the French Riviera.  We shouldn’t be demanding that governments spend more money on bigger aid budgets.  We should be calling for better aid.  Smarter metrics.  More compelling projects. Improved planning.

And this, dear reader, is what the aid industry can learn from Hollywood.

POST SCRIPT: I recognize that I probably didn’t need to use an entire day of Kavya-the-intern’s time in order to make this point, but it’s important to keep the interns busy.  Idle hands are the devil’s plaything, after all.

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Posted in Aid Effectiveness, Aid industry, Measuring Impact | 3 Comments »

Send us the money or the kid gets it

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

PDT's former spokesmodel Abdul

Meet “Abdul”.  That’s not his real name.  I don’t know his real name.  We never met.  But I saw his photo every day for a year or so on the front page of PDT’s website and eventually took to referring to him as Abdul.  And every time I saw his picture, I would hear a Record Scratch sound effect in my head.

Why?  Well for one thing, this adorable little scamp had very little to do with PDT.   We had no child assistance projects and had never helped him or his family.  His photo was simply chosen by our web-designer for its emotive, “developy” look (to use his words).  And that drove me nuts.  I eventually realized why I found Abdul so jarring, which was because I saw him elsewhere.  He, or an equally beatific version of a healthy, cute, brown-skinned child, was on every aid related website I came across.  And once I noticed this, I couldn’t help seeing him everywhere, and ALWAYS on the landing page. I found this slightly ridiculous and more than a little disingenuous.

It’s disingenuous because, according to the OECD data, the largest aid sector is “Government and Civil Society” (15%), followed not far behind by “Transport and Storage” (8%).  Primary Education is well at the back of the pack (2%). So why no photos of bureaucrats in a committee meeting or shipping containers on trucks?

It’s ridiculous because it is such a transparent ploy to look “developy”.   It is emotive marketing at it’s most shameless.  The cuter the kid, the more likely the individual (and govt?) donors are to send money.  But isn’t this just as superficial as the ubiquitous hot girl in the beer ads or the green fields on the oil company websites? (Yes, I’m looking at you BP.)  I can see the heads of these aid agencies staring at their quarterly financials and muttering, “Clearly we need cuter kids.  With lollipops maybe….”

This aid eye-candy starts at the top, with government sites like these from AusAID and DFID:

AusAID: Look at the donor mommy

DFID: Smiling for dollars

CIDA tries to mix it up a little by leading with a non-smiling girl (although she appears to be the only child on that site who isn’t grinning).

CIDA: Don't make me smile

USAID ups the ante slightly by going with three children at once.  This is only fair I suppose, as they are one of the largest aid agencies in the world.

USAID: More money = more kids

The NGOs take it to an entirely new level, though.  Some of their sites look like they are ads for Sunny Mornings Daycare™.  I feel for the child highlighted on the CARE site who looks slightly uncomfortable in her role as a marketing ploy. The mother is game though.

Care: Really? I have to smile for the MDGs?

The girl on the World Food Program site is far more enthusiastic as a nascent aid advertising star.

WFP: I can do jazz-hands too if you want

World Vision, to their credit, realizes that the kid-on-the-landing-page meme is there for one reason and one reason only, to tug at the heartstrings which are connected directly to the purse strings.  Their Abdul is named “Ephrem” and he has a convenient “Sponsor Now” button right below his photo in case the subtle approach wasn’t clear enough for you.

World Vision: Send us the money or the kid gets it

When you combine NGOs and Haiti, though, the kids are really trotted out.   You would be forgiven for thinking the only people living in Haiti are under the age of five.

Care: No adults here

CRS: Just us kids

Mercy Corps: Seriously, everyone in Haiti is a toddler I swear

There are some notable, and to be honest head-scratching, exceptions that really should be highlighted. Oxfam, for example, inexplicably goes with a posse of camel riding Tuaregs, one of whom appears to be using an empty Oxfam rice bag as a saddle.

Oxfam: Southern Libya Polo Club poses for photo after raiding aid convoy.

But the weirdest choice yet must be the Catholic Relief Services site which in addition to “Giving hope to a world in need” also provides sky diving lessons.

CRS: Every donation comes with a tandem jump

So what should they put up on their website?   To be honest, there is a reason I did so poorly in Marketing at business school.  I’m no Don Draper.  But here are a few worth examples.

Kiva is a brilliant mechanism for funneling finance to micro-entrepreneurs.  On their website?  Photos of micro-entrepreneurs.

Kiva

One Acre Fund helps African farmers improve their productivity.  Shockingly, they’ve gone with photos of African farmers.

One Acre Fund

And Partners In Health, with a huge Haiti program, have managed to break free from the Haiti-as-a-giant-daycare theme and have photos of health clinics.  It’s so crazy, it might just work.

Partners in Health

As for PDT, Abdul is gone now.  But, even as I type this, a focus group is choosing between several shots of smiling Haitian babies skydiving on to camels.

(If you have a good example of the smiling-kid website, feel free to share)

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Posted in Aid industry, Haiti | 8 Comments »

Donald Rumsfeld, Naked Joe, and Aid Data

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Former US Sec. of Defence Donald Rumsfeld was widely ridiculed for this exchange:

In the bustling world of epistemology, however, Donald’s ramblings were not dementia, but a good summary of a key element of decision theory which can be applied directly to how we make aid decisions.

The phrase “unknown unknowns” refers to circumstances or outcomes we cannot conceive at present.   This is opposed to things we know to be possible, but we don’t know if they will happen – “known unknowns”.

For example, you are sitting at your laptop, reading a blog instead of working, and you know that your boss could catch you goofing off.   So you strategically place your potted fern between the screen and the door, just in case.  Whether your boss pops his head in the door or not is a known unknown and you can take steps to prepare for that eventuality.  Unbeknownst to you, however, Joe from the mail-room is standing outside your door, stark naked, and is about to burst in, kiss you on the mouth, and declare his undying love.  You didn’t see that one coming, did you?  As a result there was nothing you could have done to prevent it.

Unknown unknowns are dangerous, or in the case above, at least a little awkward.

Which is why things like AidData’s new portal or the UN’s new money tracking mechanism for Haiti are so interesting and important.  The aid community operates with surprisingly little data.  Unemployment rates are almost always wild guesstimates.   Inflation rates are widely disputed.  Pledges versus disbursements are hotly debated.  Actual spending levels are entirely unknown.  And impact?  In most cases there aren’t even agreed definitions on impact (which is why process metrics usually end up being measured instead).   Huge multi-million dollar decisions for “capacity building” initiatives are taken without donors knowing who is doing what and whether it worked or not.  Five-year employment creation projects are launched without knowing where the jobless live.  And worst, donor conferences march along with annual regularity without knowing how much was spent last year and to what effect.

And this is just a short list of the known unknowns.  Can you imagine what our unknown unknowns are?  We’ve got so many unknown unknowns, it’s like an army of naked Joes lined up outside our office.  Without more data aggregators like AidData there’s nothing we can do about it.  And that’s scary.

Hold on, someone’s knocking at my door.

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Posted in Aid Effectiveness, Aid industry, Data, Measuring Impact | 3 Comments »

Not Wanted: Mercenaries, Missionaries, and Madmen

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

We’re hiring.  Again.  We need a Development Manager in New York, a research analyst for some work in Sierra Leone and the Solomon Islands, a project assistant in Ottawa, and a light dusting of interns.  In a few weeks we will be also be adding some communication staff in New York (after some “constructive” criticism from an anonymous colleague – it’s been decided I need a ghost blogger).  Shortly after that we will likely be looking for several new people to join our Afghan team.

So if you are smart, a lateral thinker, and would not be fazed by a last minute request to fly to Kabul, then please take a look at our listings.  We’d love to have you join the team.

Finding someone who meets that description, though, is surprisingly hard which is one reason why the aid industry is such a mess. This is because 90% of the people who apply for these jobs are almost guaranteed to be a disaster.  They fall into three categories:

Mercenaries:  These folks heard you could make twice as much money in Kandahar as you can in Kansas, so they quit their job as dispatcher at their uncle’s trucking company, added “Logistician” to their resume, and promptly landed a job “inside the wire” overseeing a $30m road construction project.  While our hero around the PDT offices may be a Mercenary, the problem with hiring them is that they only stick around long enough to find a slightly more lucrative contract and they really aren’t that interested in the country or the job, just the paycheck.  The Mercenary can be identified by the dozens of DXB security stickers on his bag (he is careful never to remove them), the Leatherman tool on his belt, and the frequent Facebook updates highlighting his semiannual trips to Phuket.

Missionaries: While the Mercenary was laboring his way through an undergraduate business diploma, the Missionary was valiantly skipping classes to protest in front of the Chinese Embassy.  She is the first to arrive in a mission, and the last to leave, sustained throughout by her fervent empathy for “the people”.  For some reason, they are typically the only ones to contact dengue or dysentery, the details of which they garrulously share, believing it demonstrates their solidarity with the Timorese.  The problem with hiring the Missionaries is that while God has blessed them with passion, he has not been as generous with competence (and a lot of classes were missed to play hacky-sack in the quad).  Their good intentions are not enough, and the resulting drag on the project team can be disastrous.  The Missionary can be usually be spotted wearing local garb with a macramé shoulder bag slung across their chest, talking passionately about “empowerment”.

Don't Touch the Red Stapler

Madmen: This is the most dangerous of the three species and should be  approached with caution.  The Madman just weathered a significant personal crisis.  A nasty divorce.  A serious illness. Unexpected job loss. Their response is to leave everything and either “test themselves” or “save the world”. Both instincts bring them to places like post-earthquake Haiti like moths to a flame.  The problem with employing a Madman is that inevitably, like clockwork, they will explode after six months in-country.  The resulting drama will derail even the most well-managed project team, leaving everyone rattled.   The Madman is almost impossible to spot, until he is shouting at a colleague in a purple-faced rage because she borrowed his red stapler.

Bring your field glasses to the Gandamack in Kabul, or the Mamba Point Hotel in Monrovia, or the Esplinada in Dili and you’ll see all three of these species, guaranteed.  The aid industry is full of them.  It operates in a very inefficient labor market.  It’s hard to compete with Wall Street and even Main Street, when the most you can offer is a slightly higher salary, longer hours, some good med-evac insurance, and all the frequent flyer miles you could need.  But don’t let that dissuade you.  You can have fun, and change the world, which is worth something, no?  So, take another look at our job listings.  We need you, because there is a line up out our door of Mercenaries, Missionaries, and Madmen.

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Posted in Aid Effectiveness, Changing the world | 12 Comments »

Kim Kardashian Saves Haiti

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

Last year I gave a lecture at a Canadian university that culminated with one student standing up and shouting “This is bullshit!” before marching out.  To be honest, while I was delighted to have been so provocative, it was still somewhat unnerving.

So last month, as I stepped up to the podium to give a speech at UCLA Berkeley, I was a little more nervous than public speaking would normally make me.  To make matters worse, an unnamed colleague (let’s just call her Jennifer – Jennifer Holt) gave me this helpful advice just before I left for California: “You’ll do great.  Just don’t use your arrogant ass voice.”

Standing at the podium, trying to clear the arrogance out of my throat, and hoping that no one stormed out until at least the Q&A session, I turned to the screen behind me and saw that the AV laptop had chosen this precise moment to download a Windows 7 patch.  I may like the way Bill Gates uses metrics, but I really hate his operating system.

As a result, the audience at Berkeley did not get to see this brilliant video of Kim Kardashian’s plea to help post-earthquake Haiti:

The idea of sending shoes (or t-shirts or yoga mats) as aid has been roundly criticized all across the interwebs and there isn’t much more I could add to this.  Besides, if you are reading this blog you’ve probably already got a pretty good idea why this is a bad idea.  If you don’t, let me just skip to the punch line: Don’t send shoes, send money (or doctors).

But this video is such a ridiculous artifact, I feel I need to share it nonetheless.  The best part is when Kim starts talking about New Orleans instead of Haiti.  Great stuff.  I’m pretty sure that if that laptop hadn’t started downloading a patch, and if I had been able to play this video, that speech in Berkeley would have been a huge hit.  Jennifer is not convinced.  She’s pretty sure I used “that voice”.

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Posted in Aid Effectiveness, Aid industry, Haiti, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Mystery man who is so funny, you cry

Friday, April 30th, 2010

The staff at PDT have a new hero.  His name is Dr. Alden Kurtz, and every time he uploads a new blog post or tweets a new tweet, there is a buzz of joy that goes around the office.

Dr. Kurtz is the Executive Director of Hand Relief International.  It is one of the most vile, self-interested, over-priced, over-funded, and ineffective aid agencies this side of the beltway.  (It would be preposterous to include the bandits inside the beltway. That’s an entirely different league.)  Kurtz and his minion “Nathan the intern”, exist merely to skim fat consulting contracts off the donor agencies while expensing the mini-bar bill at the nearest Serena.

Dr. Kurtz - the Mystery Blogger

So, why do we like him so much?  Well, other than the fact that we seem to frequent the same watering holes, Kurtz is a satirical character.  The mystery author is delivering a brilliant  evisceration of the aid industry and its more well-paid denizens.  If you’ve spent any time in Kabul, or Port au Prince, or Monrovia, or if you read anything about aid missions, then you instantly recognize Dr. Kurtz.  It is impossible to board a Merpati flight to Dili without bumping into a dozen just like him.

These consultants are not a mere nuisance, they are a big business.  When PDT did an analysis of aid spending in Afghanistan, many observers could not believe that only 37% of donor money was entering the local economy.  But when you add up the $1000/day consulting contracts, the $300 night hotel rooms, the $6500 business class tickets, it’s easy to understand why so few dollars actually arrive in-country.

And how do these high-priced consultants help?  They don’t.  An old friend, Emilia Pires, was once the aid-coordination liaison for the East Timorese government.  She kept on her desk a tall pile of reports, assessments, and strategic plans.  On the top of the precarious stack was a place card with a total price of $X millions of dollars printed in bold large font. When a foreign donor would come to see her and happily announce that his government had just approved $400k to fund a team of advisors who would be “evaluating the sustainable grass roots strategies for empowering gender-based solutions for economic reform”, Emilia would smile, point, and ask them how many inches it would add to her pile?  She was not popular among donors.

And this is why Dr. Kurtz, even though we have no idea who he is, is a hero here at PDT.  Kurtz is shedding some strong light on the scavenging flocks of aid vultures who are largely responsible for the disastrous state of the development industry.  And he is very very funny as he does it.

Just try to forget, as you read his blog, that the failures of the aid industry contribute to the fact that 26,000 children under the age of five die every day to largely preventable causes.  Or 54 in the three minutes it took you to read this.

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Posted in Africa, Aid Effectiveness, Aid industry, Changing the world, Measuring Impact | 5 Comments »

Bureaucrat Bob vs Bill Gates

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

I’m no fan of Bill Gates’ operating system, but I do like what he does with disease.

Let me explain why.  I came to the aid world from the government side.  I was a diplomat.  I didn’t like my job for many reasons, one of which was that government likes process and worse, it likes to measure process.  Why? Because it is easier than measuring impact and it looks far better. Allow me illustrate with an example.

Bureaucrat Bob is informed by his elected master that the government wants to “empower communities to fight AIDS” and gives him $1m from the budget to do so.  So Bob consults with experts and stakeholders and comes up with a plan to spend the money in a helpful fashion.  So far so good.  But his elected master needs to show results, fast.  The problem is that there is almost nothing you can do to combat HIV which will produce instant results.  It takes years for infection rates to drop.  So Bureaucrat Bob sends up a report highlighting how they are well on the way to success as demonstrated by the number of clinics being supported, the number of stakeholders who have been consulted, and the number of kits that have been distributed.  Busy busy busy! The politician trumpets these numbers in a speech, and puts it on his website, and talks about it on TV.

A year comes and goes, and the elected master asks Bob “How we doing?  AIDS fixed?”  The answer is “Errr no, but the incidence of new cases has been reduced by 5%.”  That may be a huge victory, but it’s a horrible sound bite.  So the elected master decides that this year he’s spending $2m and he’s going to DOUBLE the number of new clinics and the number of stakeholder meetings. Bob anticipates this and he has already tracked, and measured, and projected all these numbers.  In fact, he cut the budget for measuring impact in order to do so.   And the local clinics that Bob is funding?  He asks them for weekly reports on how many meetings and how many kits were distributed.  He doesn’t bother to ask them for how many new cases of AIDS are reported because, frankly he doesn’t care.

In an example from my experience with PDT, one government donor has given us a lot of money over several years to work on a particular problem.  They ask for reports, lots of them.  They want every metric you could imagine: how many women we employ; how many meetings we’ve held; how many people we’ve trained.  It goes on and on, but they have not once asked us what impact we’ve had.  The good news is that this particular project is a spectacular success and the impact is amazing.  But the donor doesn’t care.  It is process that counts.

Which is why I am feeling so fond towards Bill Gates this week.  He has spent over $700 million on polio eradication.  And he has lots of process metrics to show for it.  In fact, its pretty impressive how many people he has been able to inoculate.  But the impact?  Not so good.  In fact polio is actually spreading.  But he cares!  So Bill gathered some smart people together and they looked at the impact metrics and they came up with a new plan (to be announced next week).

And Bureaucrat Bob?  He has no idea if AIDS is getting better or worse, but to the delight of his elected master, he just announced that last year they were able to TRIPLE the number of stakeholders meetings.  Good job Bob.  Good job.

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